ELEANOR AND THE COLD WAR

Eleanor Roosevelt’s temporary secretary finds that solving murders is part of her duties.

When she starts working for Mrs. Roosevelt in 1951, Kay Thompson thinks her job will be interesting and possibly glamorous. Little does she know. Her world changes when she and her employer open the door of a washroom on the Royal Blue train standing in Washington’s Union Station and find the body of a young woman Mrs. Roosevelt had been searching for. Elsa Meyer, an atomic scientist living in Sweden, had asked Mrs. Roosevelt to try to find her daughter, Susan, because she was afraid Susan had been recruited by the Soviets. Kay, who quickly learns that the former first lady is tough as nails, still worries that the State Department will be furious because Kay failed to keep her out of trouble. She notices that whoever was in the room with Susan was wearing the distinctive and expensive Caswell-Massey Number Six cologne, ruling out the porter as a leading suspect. Going to call the police, Kay sees a distinctive-looking man and an exhausted woman with an unruly child who’ll play important roles. When the police arrive in the form of handsome Det. Timothy O’Malley and his rude and racist partner, Det. Barlow, Mrs. Roosevelt explains that Susan had been using the name Susie Taylor, wanted to be an actress, had a lover, and may have been involved in espionage. So, which of those entanglements provided the motive for her murder? Sleuthing with Mrs. Roosevelt makes Kay, whose sole previous ambition was to find an attractive, well-off man to marry, completely change her goals.

An engrossing story set in an era of communist hysteria.